Author: Systematic

Assuming mankind finds a way not to destroy itself in the near future and assuming that there will still be historians in the 22nd or 23rd centuries, I bet you that they will look at the AngloZionist Empire and see the four following characteristics as some of its core features: lies, willful ignorance, hypocrisy, and hysterics. To illustrate my point I will use the recent “Skripal nerve-gas assassination” story as it really encompasses all of these characteristics. I won’t even bother debunking the official nonsense here as others have done a very good job of pointing out the idiocy of the official narrative. If you are truly capable of believing that “Putin” (that is the current collective designator for the Evil Empire of Mordor currently threatening all of western civilization) would order the murder of a man whom a Russian military court sentenced to only 13 years in jail (as opposed to life or death) and who was subsequently released as part of a swap with the USA, you can stop reading right now and …

Text and pictures by Sharmine Narwani Was in #EastGhouta today, 25 meters from a battlefront btwn Shifouniyeh & Misraba, areas recently liberated from militants. Western journalists flock to humanitarian corridor in north, but not a single one visited this makeshift chemical lab discovered by the SAA yesterday. With the US threatening direct attacks on #Syria because of alleged chemical weapons use, and the Russians & Syrians claiming militants are using CWs to provoke a US attack…you would think western journalists would be all over this terrorist-run lab – even if to debunk it. I couldn’t even hazard a guess at what was cooking in this terrorist-run lab in #EastGhouta. This stuff needs to be tested by independent experts, but the int’l community isn’t interested. You’d think they’d want a look before Trump starts a war over fake WMDs. SAA says they tested these canisters immediately & found traces of chlorine. Chlorine weapons were first used in Aleppo around 2013. At the time, western-backed terrorists had taken control of #Syria‘s only chlorine manufacturing plant, based in …

RT reports: The first group of militants have surrendered their arms and left East Ghouta as an increasing number of rebel fighters in Syria seek to disassociate themselves from Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists, the Russian military has announced. “Certain representatives of illegal armed groups have intensified attempts to get in touch with the Syrian government forces and the Russian Center for Reconciliation with the aim of discussing their separation from the banned terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra,” Major General Yury Yevtushenko, the head of the Reconciliation Center in Syria, said in a statement on Friday. Efforts to separate the so-called moderate opposition fighters from jihadists continue in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian government established a humanitarian corridor which remains open to both civilians and militants who are willing to lay down their arms. The first group of 13 militants used the gateway to leave the rebel-controlled Damascus suburb via Muhayam al-Wafideen corridor overnight. Video of the exodus under government watch shows fighters carrying their belongings and boarding vehicles to head to Idlib. Yevtushenko attributed …

Still from the video below showing the Syrian Army entering Beit Sawa today. Al Masdar News reports: BEIRUT, LEBANON (5:39 P.M.) – After short but high-pitched battle, elite forces of the Syrian Army have taken full control of an imperative half-way point in Damascus’ East Ghouta region – the town of Beit Sawa. According to military-affiliated sources, insurgent fighters of Faylaq al-Rahman and Jaysh al-Islam abandoned their positions in Beit Sawa after the Syrian Army breached their main defensive line on the town’s outskirts and entered its center. Elite Syrian assault troops had their operation to take the town backed up by tank and artillery forces as well as airpower. The capture of Beit Sawa has now burst open the door for the Syrian Army to advance on a major militant stronghold in East Ghouta – the town of Masraba – from its southern and eastern approaches. It is yet to be seen if the Syrian Army commits to fully-fledged attack on Masraba tonight (Wednesday) or holds off operations against the rebel stronghold for another …

By James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation blog: Today’s lead story, Russian Threat on Two Fronts Meets Strategic Void in the U.S., aims to keep ramping up twin hysterias over a new missile gap and fear of Russian “meddling” in the 2018 midterm elections. The Times’s world-view begins to look like the script of a Batman sequel with Vlad Putin cast in The Joker role of the cackling psychopath who must be stopped at all costs! America’s generals have switched on the Batman signal beacon, but Donald Trump in the role of the Caped Crusader, merely dithers and broods in the splendid isolation of his 1600 Penn Avenue Bat Cave, suffering yet another of his endless bipolar identity crises. For God’s sake, The Times, shrieks, do something! The Russians are coming! (Gotham City’s Chief of Police Hillary said exactly that last week in a Tweet! I think they misunderstood Mr. Putin’s recent message when he announced a new hypersonic missile technology that would, supposedly, cut through any imaginable US missile defense. The actual message, for …

Ahmad Al-Issa in Twitter‏: To those who worry that East Ghouta might become 2nd Aleppo*, this is the liberated Aleppo. The central park (yesterday [Thursday March 1]) is alive and full of people: Happy, safe & free after the defeat of terrorism. *As it happened in Aleppo, the jihadi groups controlling the eastern party of Ghouta city, in order to prevent civilians from leaving, are shelling the humanitarian corridor opened by the Syrian Army.

By Eduard Popov in Fort Russ: On March 1st, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his Address to the Federal Assembly (the upper and lower chambers of the Russian parliament, i.e., the Federation Council and State Duma). This speech was, in all likelihood, not only of political, but of historic significance – first and foremost because of the foreign policy agenda voiced in the speech. The domestic policy dimension of Putin’s speech also deserves consideration in due time. A number of important circumstances shaped Putin’s 2018 Address to the Federal Assembly. First of all, the head of state usually addresses the Federal Assembly in December, but at the end of last year it was announced that the event would be postponed. What caused this change? The easiest explanation would be that Russian presidential elections are approaching on March 18th. Without a doubt, Putin’s March 1st speech was delivered in a pre-election context. Against Putin’s speech, which I am inclined to consider historic, the debates between the other presidential candidates look minuscule and even absurd. Nevertheless, …

Just as President Donald Trump has reached back into U.S. history to draw inspiration for his “America First” policy from President Andrew Jackson’s mid-19th century populism, so too is Chinese President Xi Jinping reaching back to the Zhou dynasty 3,000 years ago — which lasted longer than the entire existence of the U.S. — for inspiration. Xi’s idea of a “new era” of global relations based on a “community of common destiny” is drawn from the concept of tianxia — or “all under heaven,” living in harmonious coexistence — that reigned during that ancient era. Jacksonian-style “America First” policies have never been attempted in our age of interdependence that was largely created by liberal internationalist policies of the U.S. during the 20th century. Nor has the Chinese concept of tianxia ever been tried on a world scale among highly distinct civilizations and political systems tightly tethered by globalization. In The WorldPost this week, we examine the conjunction of these two opposite historical resonances coming together at the same time. And we check the claims of …

The image taken from social media shows the site of a reported Israeli strike in Masyaf, Hama Province, Syria, September 7, 2017. ArabiSouri on steemit: This was a question asked on Quora and some had different answers, many talking in favor of #Israel with a lot of wishful thinking for the #Zionist apartheid Israel. Here’s my reply which covers some of the reasons. Israel is a rogue borderless ‘entity’ living on land foreign imported immigrants stole from Palestinians using terrorism as the main method then waging horrific wars against its neighbors. Israelis couldn’t live a single day without complete funding from the USA, France, Germany and even from Russians but through a different way. US Aid to Israel – Try not to be shocked! Here’s how the Political Zionism movement took control of all the Western countries: Political Zionism in the United States of America – Astounding Facts! About 1 million Russians, many of them Jews, migrated to occupied Palestine aka Israel. They are a main source of income and trade and a profound …

Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report: “This induced ‘state of emergency’ is designed to prepare the American public, politically and psychologically, to maintain the momentum of the U.S. imperial offensive in the world.” The only people that can make Russiagate fade away are the ones that invented it in the first place: the spooks, Wall Street Democrats and institutional servants of capital that gathered in Hillary Clinton’s overstuffed campaign tent, last year, to plot the next moves of a beleaguered U.S. empire. Although a Bernie Sanders’ upset in 2016 had always been a statistical impossibility, Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party machinery had destabilized the duopoly political system at a time of great stress for U.S. imperialism. The previous year, the Russian military had set up shop in Syria, blocking U.S.-backed jihadists from ousting the secular, Arab nationalist government of Bashar al Assad. It was Vladimir Putin’s answer to the global military offensive launched by Barack Obama in 2011, with NATO’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, followed immediately by the jihadist push into …

A Syrian army soldier removes an Islamic State flag from the historic ruins of Palmyra. Reuters reports: BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s army declared victory over Islamic State on Thursday, saying its capture of the jihadists’ last town in the country marked the collapse of their three-year, hardline reign in the in the region. The army and its allies are still fighting Islamic State in desert areas near Albu Kamal, the last town the militant group had held in Syria, near the border with Iraq, the army said. But the capture of the town ends Islamic State’s era of territorial rule over the so-called caliphate that it proclaimed in 2014 across Iraq and Syria and in which millions suffered under its hardline, repressive strictures. Yet after ferocious defensive battles in its most important cities this year, where its fighters bled for every house and street, its final collapse has come with lightning speed. Instead of a battle to the death as they mounted a last stand in the Euphrates valley towns and villages near the …

Marine Corps jets flew over the pyramids of Egypt during a military exercise in 1999. Credit Staff Sgt. Jim Varhegyi/United States Air Force Adam Johnson in FAIR: Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it’s rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial. On Monday, the New York Times (10/22/17) lamented the expansion of America’s “forever wars” overseas, without once noting that every war mentioned is one the editorial board has itself endorsed, while failing to oppose any of the “engagements” touched on in the editorial. The Times began by noting the sheer scope of US military reach: “The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories…. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of …

A Syrian Arab Army soldier soldier celebrates the lifting of the three year long siege of Dier ez-Zor by ISIS. Alastair Crooke* in Consortium News: Plainly, Syria’s success – notwithstanding the caution of President Bashar al-Assad in saying that signs of success are not success itself – in resisting, against the odds, all attempts to fell the state suggest that a tipping point in the geopolitics of the region has occurred. We have written before how the Syria outcome dwarfs that of Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah, significant though the result of that war was, too. Both events taken together have brought America’s unipolar moment in the Middle East to an end (though not globally, since the U.S. still retains its necklace of military bases across the region). The successes have corroded badly, the reputation of the Gulf States and have discredited fired-up Sunni jihadism as a “go-to” political tool for Saudi Arabia and its Western backers. But, aside from the geopolitics, the Syria outcome has created a physical connectivity and contiguity that has not existed for some …

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman attend a welcoming ceremony ahead of their talks in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia October 5, 2017. Sputnik/Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin via REUTERS Pepe Escobar in Asia Times: What a difference a year – an eternity in geopolitics – makes. No one could see this coming; the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadi terror – which Russia fights no holds barred, from ISIS/Daesh to the Caucasus Emirate – beating a path to the Kremlin and about to embrace Russia as a strategic ally. The House of Saud was horrified by Russia’s successful campaign to prevent regime change in Syria. Moscow was solidifying its alliance with Tehran. Hawks in the Obama administration were imposing on Saudi Arabia a strategy of keeping oil prices down to hurt the Russian economy. Now, losing all its battles from Syria to Yemen, losing regional influence to both Iran and Turkey, indebted, vulnerable and paranoid, the House of Saud has also to confront the ghost of a possible coup in Riyadh against …

Chris Hedges in TruthDig: The American empire is coming to an end. The U.S. economy is being drained by wars in the Middle East and vast military expansion around the globe. It is burdened by growing deficits, along with the devastating effects of deindustrialization and global trade agreements. Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity from prosecution for massive acts of financial fraud, all the while looting trillions from the U.S. treasury in the form of bailouts. The nation has lost the power and respect needed to induce allies in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa to do its bidding. Add to this the mounting destruction caused by climate change and you have a recipe for an emerging dystopia. Overseeing this descent at the highest levels of the federal and state governments is a motley collection of imbeciles, con artists, thieves, opportunists and warmongering generals. And to be clear, I am speaking about Democrats, too. The empire will limp along, steadily losing influence …

Screencap from the video below […] RT: The siege of Deir ez-Zor has now been broken, and the Syrian president has congratulated the country’s military. How big a victory is this? What is the strategic or symbolic importance? Ammar Waqqaf: This is in Syrian terms a historic day. There are many aspects to why this is hugely significant. The first aspect is that there is a group of Syrians, a segment of the Syrian population, who refused to say at a certain moment in time when all the omens said something different – that the government in Damascus is going to collapse imminently and so on. They refused to succumb to the incoming forces of Islamic fanatics, unlike other places. They stuck with their government, and they stuck with their army, and now their suffering has been vindicated. This marks a huge shift in the whole set of choices that have been made by various segments of the Syrian population throughout this crisis. Another aspect of significance is that the government of President Bashar …

RT reports: Encouraged by reports that the lifting of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) blockade of Deir ez-Zor was days away, defenders of the city celebrated the news on Sunday night, as footage from inside the city shows. The video was reportedly shot in the Jura district of the city, which has been besieged by the Islamic State terrorist group since 2014.Syrian government forces are advancing from several directions to break the blockade of the provincial capital, with the Russian Air Force supporting the offensive from the air. Related: Mohammed Ibrahim Samra, the governor of Deir ez-Zor has stated that the Syrian Arab Army is 24 to 48 hours away from storming the gates of Deir ez-Zor city which for years has been besieged by ISIS. Furthermore, Deir ez-Zor has subsumed the role as the major ISIS stronghold in Syria as fighters continue to flee the self-proclaimed ISIS capital of Raqqa. While the United States and its Kurdish proxies who lead the SDF are struggling to break into Raqqa city, which is being held …

C.J. Hopkins in Counterpunch: Thank God for the Charlottesville Nazis! For a moment there, it was looking like we were actually going to have a few days to stop and reflect on the state of America without being subjected to some new form of manufactured mass hysteria. Seriously, just a few short weeks ago, as the corporatist ruling classes’ ridiculous attempt to convince the world that Donald Trump is some sort of Russian sleeper agent appeared to be finally fizzling out, a significant number of leftist types were beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the fact that the United States government is controlled by a global corporate plutocracy that has no allegiance to any nation, or people, or to anything other than itself, and that is in the process of demonizing and potentially deposing an elected president … that maybe that might be something to focus on, not exclusively, by any means, but alongside other vital issues, like defending the rights of transgender drone pilots and purging syllabi of oppressive pronouns. Fortunately, thanks to the Nazis …

Photo from Women in Iran are too hip to handle – even with strict religious dress laws in Metro John R. Bradsley in The Spectator: The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an unleashing of the ancient hatred of Sunni for Shia — now exists in name only. Last month, days before an assault on its Shia inhabitants by the Saudi regime, the UN designated it a place of unique cultural and religious significance. But under the guise of fighting Iran-backed terror cells, the Saudis then subjected Awamiya’s entire civilian population to the indiscriminate use of fighter jets, rocket-propelled grenades, snipers, heavy artillery, armoured assault vehicles and cold-blooded executions. More than a dozen Shia, including a three-year-old boy, were killed. Hundreds of young men were rounded up. At least 500 homes were flattened, and 8,000 residents were forcibly removed from those that remained. Saudi soldiers recorded themselves dancing and singing amid the rubble of the town’s once-beautiful old city. They stomped on a …

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